The present invention relates in general to the design and assembly of transportation vehicles and powertrains, and, more specifically, to a method of coordinating the design of various powertrains to improve efficiency, reduce complexity, increase commonality of components, and simplify the resulting assembly operations.
A typical original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of transportation vehicles offers a full line of vehicles including cars, sport utility vehicles, trucks, and vans. A platform may be developed as a basic underlying structure to be shared by several vehicle lines. Each line itself comes in a variety of models which may change each year and which are offered with various options.
The assembly process for transportation vehicles is a very complex series of highly engineered operations. Assembly facilities and equipment represent a very large investment and have significant operating costs. Due to variations in vehicle models and the optional features, the assembly infrastructure must be configured to handle the operations involved in assembling each variant or model.
Similarly, the efforts to design and develop a vehicle and all of its component parts is a complex and expensive undertaking. Each separate model has its own unique requirements and specifications which must be used to guide the design efforts.
Each vehicle model has some particular type of a powertrain (i.e., a power plant and transmission) for converting an energy source (e.g., gasoline from a fuel tank or electricity from a battery) into motion to be applied to the vehicle wheels. During assembly, the power plant (i.e., a combustion engine and/or an electric motor) and the transmission, which arrive at the assembly plant preassembled, are mounted to a vehicle frame. Other components are then attached to the powertrain such as an engine manifold, oil cooler, starter motor, air conditioning compressor, driveshaft, electrical harness pigtails, and many other components depending on the particular model. Due to the wide design variations in engines, motors, and transmissions, assembly operations for these other components vary significantly from model to model. Components that interface to the powertrain may be similar across different vehicle models (e.g., a coolant hose or a fuel line) but each may require separate design and validation efforts because the different powertrains that they attach to have different layouts.